When I visited the farm, it was raining lightly and Denki had built a fire of bamboo charcoal under a covered area between the home and the guest house. I was traveling with a small group of American journalists and a couple of representatives from The Japanese External Trade Organization and we all huddled near the fire. Moments before we arrived, Nobuko had harvested some of the early bamboo shoots and she was wrapping the shoots in aluminum foil to be cooked over the charcoal fire.

“This is my favorite way to eat the bamboo shoots,” she said. As she put the foil-wrapped shoots on the fire, Nobuko explained that in order to be enjoyed this way, the shoots had to be eaten in a matter of hours after harvest. Older shoots become bitter.
The other journalists and I sipped green tea and grew more and more excited about trying this delicacy. Nobuko told us about her camellia sinensis plant, the source of green tea and promised to show us her rice growing area.

“I raise just enough rice and tea for the household and the guests at the inn,” she said through an interpreter. “I don’t sell any.” Even though the shoots were grilled and therefore “cooked,” she called them bamboo sashimi and she served them in thin slices with shoyu for dipping, the same way fine raw fish would be served. “To ship them to restaurants and markets,” she said, “we blanch them first in boiling water.”

“Early in the season like this,” she said the shoots sell for around 1500 yen per kilo. Later in the season, when the shoots are more widely available and excitement over the first of the season crop has subsided, the price drops to about 70 yen. “At that point,” she said, “I pickle the shoots and use them for soup. People come from far away to eat my bamboo shoot soup,” she said.

When the bamboo shoots were finally unwrapped, sliced up and dipped in the soy sauce, they were a revelation, nothing like any bamboo shoots I had ever tasted. Imagine having had only canned peas for a lifetime and tasting one fresh for the first time. One of the journalists pointed out later that they were “like fresh artichokes, earthy potatoes, nutty girasol,” and they were. But they were also quite unlike anything else I had ever eaten, with a unique texture and a subtle almost haunting flavor.

When the bamboo shoots were all gone, the Uwais brought out more tea and some Yomogi mochi, sweet rice cakes that were bright green with wild mountain herbs that Nobuko had pounded into the rice paste. Inside, they were filled with red bean paste sweetened with Okinawan sugar.

“I was born four days after the war ended in 1945,” said Nobuko as we sipped our tea and warmed ourselves by the charcoal fire, “and when I was a girl, my mother did not want me to marry Denki. He’s a farmer, she said, you have been to high school. You should go the city and get a job, be a modern woman. But I wanted to marry a farmer. I love the country life. And besides,” she said, “I knew that someday gatherings like this would occur and I would meet people like you.”

Before we went back to the bus, Nobuko and Denki showed us the bamboo forest and showed us how to identify spots where the shoots were about to sprout. They pointed out the tea plant and the “mountain herbs” that were used to flavor and color the mochi we had just eaten. Then they showed us the rice paddy that they carefully maintained with their own hands. Discretely tucked into a small alcove in the side of the wall surrounding the field was a statue of the Buddha, decorated with fresh flowers from Nobuko’s garden. As we boarded the bus and rode away, they waved after us until we were out of sight.